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“You can’t come dressed like that.” He looked her up and down with open appreciation. She was delightful to the eye, a perfect blend of spirit and good taste, enough beauty displayed to hold any man’s attention, and yet sufficiently modest and with that measure of dignity and self-possession to make it plain she was her own person and there was immeasurably more concealed than any man could learn unless he gave a great deal of himself in return. He found he most definitely wanted her to come, whether she was of the slightest use or not. Her company would be delightful.
“I shall borrow my maid’s clothing,” she promised. “When may we begin?”
“Tomorrow morning,” he answered with no more than a hint of a smile, his eyebrows raised. “Is eight o’clock too early for you?”
“Not in the slightest,” she rejoined, her chin high. “I shall be here at eight o’clock, on the dot.”
He grinned. “Excellent!”
Mrs. Mundy knocked on the door and brought in the hot chocolate. Monk accepted it as if it were champagne.
5
IN BLOOMSBURY, where they set off the next morning, it was a still, cold morning, but as they went east, and drew nearer to the river, they came into fog. It grew thick in the throat and sour with the smell of smoke from house and factory chimneys. Eventually, short of the Isle of Dogs they could go at no greater pace than a careful walk. The hansom stopped in Three Colt Street. Monk paid the cabby and held out his hand to help Drusilla down. As she had promised, she was dressed in her maid’s clothes: a dark-colored skirt and pale undistinguished blouse under a jacket top and a cloak which could have been either brown or gray. In the thin half-light of the fog it was impossible to tell. She had put a shawl over her bright hair and even one or two smuts and smears on her cheeks, but nothing could mask her natural beauty, or the white evenness of her teeth when she smiled.
The cab moved off into the gloom, and with a little shiver she linked her arm in his and they began the long task. At first she stood well back as Monk spoke to peddlers, a running patterer and a rag-and-bone man, and learned nothing of use. He was not surprised that she found them alien and frightening. Their accents must have been hard for her to follow, and their faces, matted under the grime, were haunted by a permanent wariness, a mixture of anger and fear.
Within a hundred yards a troop of children now joined them, thin-faced, wide-eyed, several of them barefoot, even in the bitter cold of the wet cobbles. They were inquisitive, and eager for any odd halfpenny or farthing that might be given. Dirty little hands plucked at Monk’s sleeves and at Drusilla’s skirts, which were less than half the size of her usual crinoline.
Gradually they moved eastward. In Rope-Makers’ Field Monk tried several shopkeepers. Drusilla even plucked up courage to make several suggestions herself. But still they met with nothing useful. There were references to Caleb Stone, few of them flattering, many of them spoken with overt fear.
Emmett Street was the same. The fog from the river was even denser here, hanging in thick curtains, blocking out the light. There was no color to drain from the drab streets with their high, narrow walls, sooty and damp-stained, the chimneys dribbling out thin wreaths of smoke. Middens ran out into the gutters and the smell was choking. The fog deadened sound; even other footsteps on the wet stones were hardly audible. Now and then the wail of a foghorn came from the river a street away.
Several times Drusilla looked at Monk, question and horror in her eyes.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked, knowing the pity and the dismay she must feel, a woman who had never seen or imagined such things before. It said much for her courage that she had come this far.
“We haven’t learned anything yet,” she said doggedly, gritting her teeth. “Thank you, but I can continue.”
He smiled at her with a warmth he had no need to affect. He held her arm a little closer as they went on past the West India Docks towards the Isle of Dogs.
On West Ferry Road Monk stopped a woman with a large bosom and short, very bowed legs. She was carrying a bundle of rags and was about to go through a doorway which emitted a smell of burned fat and blocked drains.
“Hey!” Monk called out.
The woman stopped and turned, too tired for curiosity. “Yeah?”
“I’m looking for someone,” Monk began, as he had so many times before. “It’s worth something to me to find him.”
“Oh yeah?” There was a slight flicker across the impassivity of the woman’s face. “ ’Oo yer lookin’ fer, then?”
Drusilla passed her Enid’s drawing of Angus. She peered at it in the gray light. Then her face tightened and she thrust the drawing back at Monk, anger harsh in her voice.
“If yer wants Caleb Stone, yer’ll find ’im wivaht my ’elp! Stuff yer money. In’t no use ter mie in me grave!”
“It isn’t Caleb Stone,” Monk said quickly.
“Yeah ’tis!” The woman thrust the picture back at him. “Wotcha take me fer? I know Caleb Stone w’en I sees ’im!”
“It isn’t Caleb,” Drusilla said urgently, stepping forward for the first time. “He is related to him, that’s why there is such a resemblance. But look more closely.” She took the picture back from Monk and passed it to the woman. “Look at his face again. Look at his expression. Does he appear the sort of man Caleb Stone is?”
The woman screwed up her face in concentration. “Looks like Caleb Stone ter me. All got up like a toff, but got them same eyes, an’ nose.”
“But he isn’t the same,” Drusilla insisted. “This is his brother.”
?
?Garn! ’E in’t got no bruvver.”
